


Where There’s Smoke

by ThrillingDetectiveTales



Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: M/M, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-19
Updated: 2019-12-19
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:21:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21855976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThrillingDetectiveTales/pseuds/ThrillingDetectiveTales
Summary: “You can thank me by staying out of trouble,” Arthur said, detouring to his makeshift shaving table to fish a sliver of castile soap out of an old tobacco tin. There was a slowly unraveling hand-rag hanging from a bent nail jabbed into the side of the squat wooden barrel and Arthur debated for a second before grabbing it, too.Sean snorted.“That’s a failure of creativity on your part, Arthur,” he chided, low and sly. “I can think of at least a dozen ways to demonstrate my appreciation that are more exciting than keeping my nose clean.”
Relationships: Sean MacGuire/Arthur Morgan
Comments: 18
Kudos: 117
Collections: Spicy Advent - Multi-fandom Porn Advent Calendar 2019





	Where There’s Smoke

**Author's Note:**

> I have a lot of emotions about Sean MacGuire, most of which can be summarized as “WHHHYYYYY” so I decided to finish this porny little fill up for Spicy Advent as a token of my affections.
> 
> Not beta-read, but hopefully still enjoyable anyway.

“Damn that was fun,” Sean enthused for the third or fourth time since they’d fled Caliga Hall, slipping off his stolen horse and doing a few twining steps of some unidentifiable jig. He made a ridiculous picture, smeared with ash and soot, trying for a spritely two-step in the chalky Clemens Point gravel.

“Sure,” Arthur agreed dryly, rolling his eyes. He hopped off his own pilfered mare and gave her a nudge in the direction of their small, grazing misfit herd. “If you like to spend your time stuck between a militia’s worth of firearms and a few acres of _actual_ fire, it was a real barn raisin’.”

“Barn burnin’, more like,” Sean replied, with a high, delighted giggle. Arthur rolled his eyes again.

The acrid stench of tobacco smoke and gunpowder had thoroughly saturated his clothes and he had a motley collection of scrapes, bruises, and aches that could do with a good soak. Luckily they were camped right at the edge of the water, so he wouldn’t have to go far in the dark. 

He started in the direction of the lake’s edge and Sean fell into step beside him, ducking his head to take an indiscreet sniff at his absurd blue corduroy coat and straightening up with a retching gag.

“Ach, I _reek,”_ he groaned. “How do you smell, English?”

He darted into Arthur’s space before Arthur could stop him, hooking an arm around Arthur’s waist and pressing his face against Arthur’s neck. He breathed in deeply and then let it out all at once in a hot, wet gust that raised a cascade of gooseflesh down Arthur’s spine.

“Not good,” Sean determined gleefully, mouth brushing specter-soft over Arthur’s skin. “Though I suspect this is one of them pot-teacup dealies you was trying to explain to me the other day.”

“Get off, idiot,” Arthur groused, shoving him away none too gently without bothering to correct him. Sean asked a lot of stupid questions just to have an excuse to talk—it wasn’t like either of them actually gave a shit about popular idioms.

Sean laughed and stumbled away in a weaving, drunken line, flushed with the giddy aftershocks of adrenaline and blind, youthful confidence in his own immortality. 

“You fancy having a bath with me, Arthur?” he grinned, eyes sparking like wayward embers in the glow off a nearby campfire.

“I do not,” Arthur supplied succinctly. Sean rolled his eyes this time and then wandered his way back in to nudge his elbow against Arthur’s side.

“Oh, c’mon,” he goaded. Though he pitched his voice slightly lower than usual, it was still a far cry from any volume suitable for discretion. “It’ll be fun! Just the two of us and the water and the moonlight.” He glanced toward the sky and then wagged his eyebrows pointedly over his sharp grin. “My mam always said I looked particularly fetching in the moonlight. What do you think, Arthur?”

“I think your mother must’ve had quite the sense of humor,” Arthur drawled, shooting a half-hearted glare from beneath the brim of his thoroughly ruined hat. “You look just as filthy as ever from where I’m standin’.”

Sean clasped his hands over his chest and staggered back a few steps.

“Ach! Aim straight for the tender parts, man!” he complained, loud enough that Lenny and Bill and Marston all looked over from where they were clustered at the poker table. The latter seemed especially perturbed by the display, so naturally Sean made a point of tipping his hat in Marston’s direction, grin widening when Marston’s glower darkened, mouth pulling down into a scowl.

Arthur reached out and cuffed Sean on the shoulder.

“Cut that shit out,” he muttered. “We raised enough hell over at the Grays’ place, don’t need to be bringin’ any trouble home with us.”

“Aw, but I like trouble,” Sean sighed, forlorn but still grinning. He shook his head, announcing brightly, “There’s only one solution for it, way I see.”

“Only one solution for what?”

“If you want to keep me out of trouble, you’re going to have to keep an eye on me,” Sean explained. He gestured toward the banks of the lake, now only a spare few meters away. “Since I plan to spend the next thirty or so minutes communing with the fishes, you’ll just have to join me.”

His grin pulled wide and soft like taffy under the weight of his self-satisfaction. Arthur briefly considered dealing him a hearty hook to the ribs, just to rob him of a little of the smug pride puffing up his reedy chest, and decided immediately that it wouldn’t be worth the trouble.

“I expect _you_ to keep yourself out of trouble,” he grumbled instead, veering sharply for his tent.

“Come on, Arthur,” Sean wheedled, scrambling to follow after him. “You know I’m no good at keeping myself out of trouble. Rebel stock, remember? Me and trouble are practically one and the same, and left to our own devices?” Sean shrugged. “I can promise lots of things but aren’t none of ‘em any good and that’s just the damned truth.”

“I ain’t your keeper, boy,” Arthur said warningly over his shoulder, walking just fast enough that Sean had to scurry to keep up. It was always a good plan to keep the Irishman off balance if you could, straddling the fine line between confidently outpacing his stride and actively fleeing his presence.

“No, but this is at least half your fault, Arthur,” Sean insisted. Arthur glanced back at him.

“What’s half my fault?”

“This!” Sean gestured expansively to his person. “My good mood!”

Arthur snorted, drawing up to the traveling trunk he kept at the foot of his bed and pulling it open.

“Just how the hell d’you figure I’m responsible for any of that?” He glanced over, pausing where he had begun digging through a haphazardly folded pile of furs to mimic Sean’s gesture, waving a hand from the general proximity of the other man’s head to somewhere around the grass stains at his knees.

“Simple,” Sean assured, loose and unbothered where he was leaning against the corner of the wagon. He accepted the slightly moth-eaten wolf pelt Arthur handed him without so much as a raised eyebrow. “Watching you light those godforsaken tobacco fields on fire and then turn around and lay out a bunch of crazy old bastards with that rifle of yours, easy as anything?” He shook his head and cut Arthur a hooded smirk from under the rolled brim of his green bowler hat. “That really blew my bellows, if you know what I’m saying.”

“Did it now?” Arthur sighed, tugging another pelt out of the trunk. 

This one came from a bear, though it was only about half the size of an average bear pelt. Arthur—all of seventeen at the time and totally under-equipped to stare down anything quite so terrifying as your standard American black bear—had come upon the creature lumbering unexpectedly through the brush and been forced to get creative and ugly with his killing before he managed to bring the damn thing down. He had the long-faded scars on his side and the lingering wariness of heavily wooded areas to prove it. 

“So, what? That time we rescued you from prison was just a parlor trick?”

Sean canted his head, peering thoughtfully into the middle distance.

“Technically you rescued me _between_ prisons, but that was pretty exceptional, too,” he allowed, after a moment’s consideration. He found Arthur’s eye without effort, grin spreading wide. “Suppose that’s two I owe you thanks for, English.”

“You can thank me by staying out of trouble,” Arthur said, detouring to his makeshift shaving table to fish a sliver of castile soap out of an old tobacco tin. There was a slowly unraveling hand-rag hanging from a bent nail jabbed into the side of the squat wooden barrel and Arthur debated for a second before grabbing it, too. 

Sean snorted.

“That’s a failure of creativity on your part, Arthur,” he chided, low and sly. “I can think of at least a dozen ways to demonstrate my appreciation that are more exciting than keeping my nose clean.”

Arthur looked over at him. He was still leaning against the wagon with the wolf pelt clutched loosely in his arms, smirk curling sweet with promise and hips thrust forward in a way that accentuated the long line of his legs in that stiff denim he insisted on wearing.

“You want a goddamn bath or not?” Arthur snapped, and pointedly didn’t react to the sudden glee that ignited Sean’s features.

He could hear Sean following along behind him as he plodded toward the lake, a funny little shuffle-step that meant he was probably dancing again. Anybody who saw them and thought to wonder would likely have a pretty decent idea of what, precisely, this shared bathing period would entail but Arthur couldn’t quite bring himself to care.

He’d spent the majority of his day locked up in a barn listening to Sean babble, careening from nostalgic stories about his homeland to offensively crude reminiscences of his sexual exploits to overblown praise of Arthur’s various skills and assets and then back again. He had more than earned the opportunity to give Sean something better to do with that hyperactive mouth of his, should the spirit move him to it.

First things first, though—they really did need to get cleaned up.

Arthur lead the way down to the water’s edge, hugging the lazily arcing curve of the shoreline until he found a shallow inlet where a few hefty stones jutted up out of the lake’s slowly rippling surface like tiny islands. The little lagoon was reasonably private and ought to be far enough from camp not to cause too much of a spectacle, even with Sean’s predilection toward histrionics. 

Arthur shucked his clothes off without so much as a by your leave, kicking them into a pile in the scrubby grass and dropping the bearskin beside them. He made sure he had the soap and rag both securely in hand and waded purposefully into the water, refusing to look back.

Sean made a sound not unlike a squawk and started muttering under his breath in a brogue so thick Arthur couldn’t quite understand him. He smirked to himself, satisfied by the younger man’s off-kilter bluster. Fabric rustled and there came a couple of muted thuds—boots, or maybe guns; something solid and heavy dropping to the dirt—and then Sean was scrambling into the water like a fish cut free of the line, kicking sheets of tepid spray up Arthur’s back as he pressed in close.

“Oy!” he huffed. “Wait just a damn second, there, English!”

“Here.” Arthur dunked the rag under the water and then turned around just far enough to lob the soaking wad directly into Sean’s unsuspecting face. The kid yelped like a kicked dog and jumped about a foot into the air, but he managed to catch the washcloth as it fell away with a saturated _plop._ “Clean yourself up.”

“You know, Arthur, when I said I wanted you to come down the lake with me, I was picturing something a wee bit more - ” Sean started, wringing the washcloth in his fists.

“Shut up,” Arthur warned, smacking at the surface of the water and sending a stream of white spray hissing in the direction of Sean’s disappointed pout. “You said you wanted a bath, you’re damn well havin’ one. Now, you need some soap to go with that rag or did you intend to stand here bellyaching ‘til I finally lose my composure and drown you?”

“I could think of worse ways to go,” Sean replied slyly, though he reached out to accept the little waxy chip of soap without any fuss when Arthur proffered it.

“Not many, I’d reckon,” Arthur grumbled. Sean’s fingers were warm where they touched, despite the chill coming up off the water. Arthur ignored this and nodded toward Sean’s chest. “G’won then, boy,” he ordered. “Scrub up.”

Sean huffed a laugh and shot Arthur a look that spoke volumes as to how ridiculous he found the whole charade, but he gamely wrapped the soap in the little scrap of cloth, scooped some water into his shallowly cupped hands, and set about lathering his chest. He made quick work of it, scrubbing his arms and shoulders and running the washcloth over his soot-streaked face. He dunked it under the water and then wrung it out against his skin, runnels of soapy gray foam sloughing off into the lake’s black surface where it lapped at his narrow waist.

“How’s that, then?” Sean grinned when he was finished. He let the hand clutching the washcloth fall to his side with a wet plop and trailed the fingertips of the other down the slick surface of his chest, through the sodden spray of red hair stuck dark to his pale skin. He flattened his palm out over the plane of his belly when he reached his navel and pushed on under the water. 

Even with the moon gleaming like a newly minted coin overhead, there wasn’t quite enough light to see what Sean was doing. Not that he was being particularly coy about it, with the way he bit his lip and let his head fall back a little, breath hitching as the tendons in his forearms flexed.

“Tidy enough for your fine sensibilities, there, Arthur?”

“Ain’t stinkin’ like a whore on a pyre anymore, at least,” Arthur allowed grudgingly, holding a hand out and beckoning for the washcloth with his fingers. “Gimme that.”

“What, this?” Sean lifted the washcloth, chip of soap still wrapped inside, and ducked his head, arching an eyebrow. 

“Don’t get cute,” Arthur groused. “It doesn’t suit you.” He snapped his fingers and flipped his hand over, palm up. “Now go on and hand it over.”

Sean’s amusement was a soft, shadowed crescent at each corner of his mouth. “You want it so badly, Arthur, I think you’re gonna have to come and take it from me.”

“I ain’t playin’ games, boy.”

“Good thing, too, since I have you over a bit of a barrel there, old man,” Sean warned cheerfully. He put his head to one side and narrowed his eyes, considering. “Now, I’d have you any which way, really, but you are so very fetching from behind.”

“I’m ‘bout to slap that grin offa your fool face,” Arthur warned, cheeks hot with irritation. Sean could be a right jackass when he wanted to and he was in such fine form this evening that Arthur had half a mind to saddle him up and call him a mule. Might take a decent price for him at the stable, even, if he kept on braying like he had been these past few minutes.

“Come over here and do it, then,” Sean invited, gaze sparking dark and coy over the smug pink curl of his mouth.

“You fixin’ to end up fish food,” Arthur grumbled, stalking over with long, heavy steps. He wasn’t quite sure what he intended to do when he got there. Once Arthur was within striking distance Sean was just as likely to beg a swift fist to the jaw as he was to get a clever hand around Arthur’s prick before he could register a protest. The water sluiced around Arthur’s belly as he walked, lapping shallowly up toward his ribs and then dropping back down to his hips with the motion of his stride. 

Sean meandered backward while Arthur approached, drifting just out of Arthur’s reach until he butted up against one of the big stones piercing the lake’s surface. Arthur considered his options and settled on pushing forward until he had Sean boxed neatly in against it. While the option of a knock about the ears was still firmly within reach, Arthur had to admit that he liked the way Sean turned his face up toward Arthur’s, sprawling back against the rock’s water-worn surface, nearly as much as he enjoyed watching the other man take his well-deserved lumps.

Sean still had one hand under the water, though he abandoned his more lascivious activities in favor of curling his fingers over Arthur’s hip as soon as he had drawn near enough. His eyes were storm-dark sea glass under twin fans of long, copper lashes. “There, now,” Sean grinned, sliding his thumb along the low plane of Arthur’s belly, warm in the cool water. “Was that really so hard?”

“Gimme the goddamn soap,” Arthur muttered.

Sean huffed a soft laugh, near enough that Arthur could feel the hot gust of it against his cheek, and raised an eyebrow. “Sure that’s all you want from me?”

Arthur rolled his eyes and reached for where Sean was holding the rag, still wrapped around the slowly dissolving chip of soap, his hand hovering just above the water’s surface. Arthur had every intention of snatching it away for his own use and putting a decided end to this game Sean was so irritatingly insistent on playing, but before Arthur could get there, Sean’s eyes flashed dark with mischief and he brought the little bundle up to Arthur’s chest himself.

“I never met an outlaw so fussy about a little trail dirt as you, Arthur Morgan,” Sean chided with a click of his tongue. He swept the cloth across Arthur’s collarbones, squeezing as he went so it bled streams of cool suds down to Arthur’s ribs.

“A little?” Arthur echoed with an incredulous chuckle. “We’re covered in so much soot we’re fit for firewood.”

“Speak for yourself,” Sean disagreed with a sly smirk, dragging the slick cloth down nearly all the way to Arthur’s navel. “I’ve just had a bath.”

“Why, you little - ” Arthur made to grab for the rag again but Sean jerked out of his way, kicking a ragged spray up the face of the rock as he dodged Arthur’s grasp. It was a long few moments of splashing and wrestling while Arthur hissed admonishments through his gritted teeth and Sean cackled like a coyote, pale gaze gleaming in the silvery light of the moon where it shivered and glanced off the water. When they finally came to rest it was with Arthur’s hands pinning Sean’s wrists to the boulder at his back and the two of them pressed flush together from navel to knee. The soap and the hand-rag had been lost to the depths and Sean was grinning like he’d just struck gold, breath coming in short, delighted little bursts.

“If I didn’t know any better,” he drawled, rocking his hips so that the head of his stiff cock slipped along the seam of Arthur’s thigh, hot and velvet-smooth, “I’d say you might well have planned this, Arthur.”

“Please,” Arthur snorted, ignoring the reflective frisson of heat that licked up his spine. “If I was planning a seduction I would aim for better than a half-soaked rut.”

“Oh?” Sean asked, tilting his face up. He flexed his wrists, muscles shifting under the tight curl of Arthur’s fingers. Arthur’s prick stirred against his thigh and Sean rolled his hips again. “Like what?”

Arthur considered the relative merits of casting Sean aside—again—in favor of trying to scrub the lingering grime from his skin with a handful of lukewarm lake water, but the Irishman had proven to be nothing if not persistent in his efforts thus far and Arthur doubted that further protest would do much good in the long run. He cast an irritated glance skyward, hoping to convey to whatever powers watched over the scene his frustrations with his current circumstances, and then looked back down at Sean and said, “Give you something to fill that mouth with, for a start.”

A fine tremor danced its way across Sean’s shoulders. He licked at his bottom lip and sighed a breathless, “Yeah?”

“Only seems polite,” Arthur shrugged. “You been running the damn thing all day, be a shame to let all that warm-up go to waste.” He released his grip around one of Sean’s wrists in favor of curling his fingers around Sean’s chin. He put his head to one side and shifted so he could slide a leg between Sean’s parted thighs, savoring the hot flush that stained Sean’s bone china complexion when Arthur pushed up against his erection. “You like that?”

“Y’damn well know I do,” Sean muttered. He looked like he was gearing up to launch into another round of his usual lackadaisical bluster so Arthur interceded, slipping his thumb between the rough ridges of Sean’s teeth to cut him off before he could gain momentum. Sean made a ragged sound not unlike a whimper in the back of his throat and curled his tongue over the pad of Arthur’s thumb.

“I think I prefer you with your mouth full,” Arthur said, and chuckled lowly at the narrow-eyed glare Sean shot him in reply. “Hard not to, the way you always carry on - ”

Sean clearly did not appreciate this interpretation of his character because he retaliated by biting at Arthur’s thumb, _hard._ Arthur swore and yanked his hand away, shaking it out in the air as though that might assuage the sting. 

Sean was smiling, sharp and treacherous around a thin white sliver of teeth. He moved to speak when Arthur turned to scowl at him but Arthur hauled him up by the arm before he could get a word in, shoving him none too kindly back into the shallows. He marched Sean up onto the shore, back to where their little pile of castoff clothing and animal pelts was scattered across the sand.

“Easy, there, Morgan!” Sean laughed as he stumbled his way over the rocks. “A fellow’s liable to get the wrong idea, you pushing him around like this.”

“Looks to me like you’ve got just the right one,” Arthur said with a pointed glance to where Sean’s dick was bobbing stiff between his thighs. He slapped Sean on the ass with the full flat of his palm and Sean yelped and jumped away. “On your knees, boy, if you know what’s good for you.”

“Love me a man with a firm hand,” Sean grinned, batting his eyelashes even as he dropped obligingly to kneel on one of the folded-up pelts.

“Lord knows you need one,” Arthur agreed, prowling in until Sean was a spare few inches away. 

He curled a hand over either one of Arthur’s thighs, just above the knee, and Arthur reached down to tangle a fist in Sean’s wet hair, shining dull like an old penny in the gauzy moonlight. 

“Now,” Arthur drawled, “let’s try this again.” He gave himself a couple of quick, practiced strokes with his free hand, working his dick halfway to hard and guiding it toward Sean’s mouth. He paused when he was one shallow shift from those lush pink lips and tightened his grip in Sean’s hair, hard enough that Sean gasped and squeezed his eyes shut. 

“Bite me this time,” Arthur promised, voice a low, ursine rumble in the still night, “and I’ll kill you.”

Sean smirked up at him, gaze flashing dark, and licked the head of Arthur’s cock. Arthur gave Sean’s hair a warning tug and he stilled. His mouth was slick and hot, jaw open just wide enough for Arthur to fuck shallowly over the soft flat of his tongue, moving slow and wary of teeth.

They worked up a good rhythm in a matter of moments, Sean taking the occasional, careful breath through his nose while Arthur kept one hand buried firmly in Sean’s hair and cupped the other around his neck, thumb just high enough to feel the way the tendons in his jaw twitched and flexed. He looked a little ridiculous like this—pink mouth stretched wide and milk-pale skin gone splotchy with want, drool spilling in thin ribbons down his stubbled chin. Damned if the sight didn’t strike a match straight to the kindling in Arthur’s belly, even so.

Sean was leaking little, choked noises around Arthur’s dick, lashes fluttering and brow knit. Arthur dug his thumb into Sean’s jaw and breathed, “That’s it. Just like that.” He swept a stroke up the plane of Sean’s cheek and murmured, “Good boy.”

Sean whimpered and grasped at Arthur’s thighs hard enough to bruise. His cock was heavy and blood dark, beads of precome shining at the tip so thick and sticky that Arthur could see it all the way from where he was standing.

“Get yourself a hand,” Arthur instructed, rocking into the tight, wet heat of Sean’s mouth. Arthur could feel his orgasm starting to pool behind his navel, and if past experience had taught him anything it was that the last thing he needed during the afterglow was to be met there by a Sean MacGuire who hadn’t yet reached the peak of his own pleasure.

Sean managed to unclench one of his hands just long enough to fist it around his own cock in a grip far tighter than Arthur would have believed comfortable if not for the low whine it summoned. The sound came cascading up from Sean’s chest in a buzzing wave to hum around Arthur’s prick where it was still tucked into the velvet heat of his mouth. Arthur grunted and rolled his hips a little harder.

He could feel his muscles pulling, tightening up like a bowstring on the draw, and he threw his head back and groaned. He didn’t bother giving any warning before he came—Sean never seemed too fussed about it either way and he didn’t take kindly to being treated like Arthur’s sweetheart. He coughed a little when Arthur finally drew back, the last shallow spurts of his orgasm striping Sean’s chin.

“Fuck,” Sean muttered, gravel-rough through gritted teeth as he bucked desperately into his own fist. “Fuck, Arthur.” His whole face pulled into a sustained convulsion as he spilled over his own fingers, streaking the pelt and the dirt with spend.

After he had finished, he collapsed forward, resting his forehead against Arthur’s thigh and heaving breathless gasps into the night. Arthur loosened his grip on Sean’s hair, dragging his fingers through the gnarl of ginger curls as best as he could while he waited for the lingering tingle of pleasure to fade from as far out as his fingertips.

“Goddamn, there, English,” Sean sighed after a while, shifting back just far enough to wipe the back of his hand over his chin. “You made a right fucking mess out of me.”

“Guess you’ll need another bath,” Arthur observed. Sean laughed—a hoarse, broken chuckle—and shook Arthur’s hands off as he pushed himself shakily to his feet.

Arthur reeled him in by the elbow before he could get too far, curling one hand around the back of Sean’s neck and leaning in for a swift, searching kiss. Sean scrabbled at Arthur’s chest, moaning like a whore looking to earn double when Arthur sucked shamelessly on his tongue. He held Sean there for awhile, chasing down every last lick of his own taste he could find until they were both breathing like they’d just fled five miles on foot.

“You,” Sean grinned, curling his hand over Arthur’s shoulder and dipping his thumb into the divot of his collarbone, “are a filthy son of a bitch, Arthur Morgan.”

Arthur sucked his teeth and let the corner of his mouth curl up into a self-satisfied smirk.

“S’pose I’ll be needing another scrub, too,” he shrugged. Sean’s laughter rose like music on the air.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
